HAYNEVILLE, Ala. (CN) - Infosys, which employs more than 15,000 foreign workers in the United States, systematically commits visa fraud and tax fraud to increase profits, and threatened and retaliated against a "principal consultant" who called them on it, the man claims in Lowndes County Court. On its Web page, Infosys describes itself as specializing in business consulting and strategic IT services outsourcing, with 2010 revenue of $5.7 billion, and 127,779 employees. In his complaint, Jack Palmer says he worked for Infosys "as a Principal - Enterprise Solutions" since August 2008. Many of Infosys' 15,000 foreign nationals who work in the United States do so on H-1B visas, Palmer says: "Infosys is an H-1B dependent corporation and is one of the biggest 'users' of the H-1B program." After the federal government restricted the H-1B program, in 2009, Palmer says, he was sent to Bangalore, India, for "planning meetings." "During one of the meetings, Infosys management, discussed the need to, and ways to, 'creatively' get around the H-1B limitations and process and to work the system in order to increase profits and the value of Infosys' stock. The decision was made by management to start using the B-1 visa program to get around the H-1B restrictions. "Under the law, the B-1 visa category applies to temporary business visitors who come to the United States to conduct activities of a commercial or professional nature, such as consulting with business associates, negotiating a contract, or attending business conferences. Individuals on B-1 visas are prohibited by law from working in full time jobs in the United States. "During the course of his employment, plaintiff learned the Infosys was sending lower level and unskilled foreigners to the United States to work in full-time positions at Infosys' customer sites in direct violation of immigration laws. Plaintiff also learned that Infosys was paying these employees in India for full-time work in the United States without withholding federal or state income taxes. Plaintiff also learned that Infosys overbilled its customers for the labor costs of these employees. "In order for a foreign Infosys employee to obtain a B-1 visa, an American employee of Infosys had to write a 'welcome letter,' basically stating that the employee was coming to the United States for meetings rather than to work at a job." Palmer says that Infosys managers in the United States and India asked him to write false welcome letters, and he refused. On July 1, 2010, he says, he "was asked to join a conference call in regards to his refusal to write the 'welcome letters,' during which call plaintiff was chastised for not being a 'team player.'" Then he was transferred to another project in a different division, Palmer says. There, he says, he "soon learned that Infosys was illegally employing B-1 visa holders on that project as well." Infosys asked him to rewrite the contract for that project, and he refused, "because he knew that the purpose was to try to cover up Infosys' overcharging this customer by using the lower-income B-1 employees and charging the higher pay rate for specialized employees," according to the complaint. Palmer says he called Infosys corporate counsel, Jeff Friedel, and explained the violations to him. Friedel is not named as a party to this lawsuit. In September 2010, Palmer says, an Infosys manager from India "confirmed the violations, but stressed to the plaintiff that it was important to 'keep this quiet.'" Palmer says he got "further pressure, harassment and retaliation for refusing to be a part of the illegal conduct." At Friedel's urging, he says, he filed a report with Infosys' "Whistleblower Team," on Oct. 11, 2010. But the whistleblower team "failed and refused to promptly investigate plaintiff's report and still refuses to thoroughly and fairly investigate and correct the illegal conduct," Palmer says. Since filing his report, he says, he has been "subjected to constant harassment, threats, and retaliation" including "numerous threatening phone calls;" monitoring of his emails; "racial taunts or slurs, including being called 'a stupid America' and criticized for being a Christian;" refusal to pay his bonuses; refusal to "reimburse him for customary and substantial expenses;" and being forced to work more than 70 hours a week "without appropriate compensation." Palmer says he reported to Friedel that Infosys was breaking other laws, including "failure to pay federal and state income taxes; falsification of I-9 forms; and the fraudulent and illegal documentation of aliens." And he claims that Friedel "admitted by electronic mail and via phone calls that Infosys was and is guilty of visa fraud." Palmer says he repeatedly reports the "threats and retaliations" to Infosys human relations department and to corporate counsel, and they refused to do anything about it. He seeks punitive damages for breach of contract, expenses, intentional infliction of emotional distress, outrage, negligence and wanton misconduct, and legal misrepresentation and fraud. He is represented by Kenneth Mendelsohn of Montgomery.

Finally, a web site that sums up all the tricks that you need to know about displacing an American techie! Although you may end up with a hollow point in your brown, curry-scented forehead, getting H-1B visa is worth it. Hell, no risk, no reward:

Tip 2 - Dress to Impress (so that we can't easily identify you when we techies start aiming for the red dots)

The majority of H1B staff augmentation workers dress poorly. They have belts that are way too big that almost loop around their waste almost two times. They come in wearing clothes that are not pressed and look like flashbacks from the 1980s. In addition they typically have no color coordination. Be sure to be color coordinated. Dress Tips:

Don't wear the belt that is 18 inches too big for you and wraps around your body two times.

Don't wear cheap shoes that don't match your slacks. If you got the shoes for 80% off, there is reason for it. They are ugly.

Do press your clothes by a professional dry cleaner. When you do it, yourself it looks like crap. Go to the dry cleaners!

Don't wear the same pants or shirts on consecutive days. At least wait a day before wearing the same clothing item again.

Tip 3 - Status Your Boss Frequently (suck your boss's dick--it is the only sex you will get in the US)

Communicate to your boss on a frequent basis the status of what you are doing and what you have done. Don't' wait for your boss to ask for a status, proactively give your boss periodic status reports. This will really impress your boss!

Tip 5 - Go for the Job Regardless of the Required Skills (yeah, like no shit, lie on the fuckin' CV like your life depends on it, which it does, scab)

If you like the job description go for it regardless if you have the technical skills or not. Most likely you will get a functional manager who conducts the interview and manages you. You will be able to easily fool the functional manager in to thinking that you are an expert in the required skill set. Then after getting on the job and making friends with other contractors on the job, you will be able to quickly pick up the skill set on the job without the boss ever knowing that you did not have a clue about the given technology. Therefore if you like the job or the location of the job go for it. If you get fired, not a big deal. There are thousands of H1B contractor positions across the United States. You are not tied down to any geographical location, so you have thousands of jobs at your finger tips.

Copy of certificates related to academic and job experience are enough to process your H1-B visa. Just to hold you till your H1-B processing is over, some employers may ask for originals. Don’t give it to them. Getting back the original certificates could be cumbersome process in case you decided not to join the company.

The clients will base 70% of their decision making based on your communication skills. If you are able to effectively communicate with the client, you have a good chance of landing the job. Try to listen very attentively, since clients hate it when you say "Can you repeat the question?". If you are asking to the client to repeat the question on multiple occasions you are greatly reducing your chances of getting the job. You can fool them on your technical skill set, but you cannot hide poor English communication skills.

Most of you don’t even need to read this post to know why outsourcing your software development work to cheaper countries may not ultimately help you. You already know why.

The thing is that many people outsource their work to IT hubs like Bangalore to save a lot of money. But the problem is that you get a low quality product at last. The reason? You tried to cut cost too much.

You cannot get a high quality work done for a low cost. Never. Quality always comes with a price.

When outsourcing to foreign countries, always try to do it to people who promise quality product, not to people who promise lower cost. Also, never ever outsource your core development work.

I am an Indian myself and let me tell you some facts I came across:

Major Indian software companies are recruiting low quality programmers.

A large percentage (I am afraid more that 50%) of the programmers are from non-CS backgrounds. Many are mechanical engineers, electrical/electronics engineers or civil engineers.

The pay scales for fresher posts here are not the best even according to Indian standards.

We don’t care for the quality of the work we do for you. Now I don’t want to piss off any one, but the fact is that seriously no one cares about the quality of their code they do for some American company which they don’t know much about. You will get quality code only if it comes from your heart – like when you code for yourself. Most Indian software engineers don’t feel any kind of commitment to their organizations (mainly because of the way companies treat employees).

Part of the reason why many companies recruit low quality programmers is that the works we get here are mainly some support work or very monotonous and boring development work that looks like it will take ages to get completed. Many Indian programmers have their own pet projects which they dedicate their free time to and they concentrate on the quality of the code they produce for that pet projects instead of the projects they have to do in their organizations.

I never meant that there are no quality programmers in India. There are many, but the chances are very low that big software giants will recruit these bright minds (which they cannot afford). Instead, they go for cheap mechanical engineers or graduates from some second class institution.

This bullet point is supposed to occupy the place where I bash the project management BS. I don’t like bad mouthing that much. So just skip…

I guess you guys understand the situation here.

So what is the solution?

Don’t outsource. Seriously.

If your work is very monotonous and does not demand high quality, outsource. If you want a very good software product and if it the flagship product of your company, never ever outsource. You are doomed otherwise.

Of course, the comments are revealing:

I am so sick of calling tech support and getting someone whose English is so garbled I spend half the phone conversation saying.. ” excuse me can you repeat that”I grew up in a multilingual household and I am used to thick accents but really the tech support nowadays is just unbearable. I have, on most occasions, received such poor service from untrained staff that in most cases I have to find a friend who can assist. The companies believe they are saving money but in actuality they are getting ripped off because the outsourced employee is worthless and you end up with a negative feeling toward the company that is using them.

...

One Word. Off-shore Sucks.

I know a lot of Indiots, I mean Indians that say they know and everything is very easy, very easy. the fact is that the majority of them are a bunch of liars,they will lie to you wihout even blinking thier eyes just to get the job, once they land on the job they try to learn, by the time you realize they know nothing and they lie to you you have invested a lot on them and sometimes it is hard to evaluate what is more expensive, fire the Indian and get a new one or try to make the Indian to deliver. Off-shore is a bad idea, it does not matter what is the point of view, it does not work. wether we are talking about development, customer service, etc, a resource in the other side of the world with a total different mentality can not help you the same as someone in your own timezoneand with at least s similar clash.

Off-shore was, is and will always be a bad idea.

Got outsorced? Off-shore sucks

I needed to rant on why outsourcing sucks. I wish I could name ONE incident in which through outsourcing I received superior service but it hasn’t happened yet.

...

I am an engineer in a big company, like IBM, MS, QUALCOMM etc. I work with Indian Engineer everyday. I have never met them. But I felt that they must be the kind of bad engineer described by you. I am very frustrated by the quality of their work.

3 lines of code, one serious bug. That is my feeling.

I always thought, there must be some smart Indian engineers. But sorry, I have to say I never met an ordinary engineer. All of them suck, and the mangers suck.

About the quality and quantity of work, 10 of them can not compare with me. They just don’t know what they are doing.

Finally:

I 100% agree with this post and I can do so based upon my experiences with outsourcing software/web development to India.

About a year ago we decided to try our hand at outsourcing some PHP programming for a website of ours instead of doing it ourselves. So we set out with our first company (Sanvera Solutions), agreed upon specs, requirements, and a price.

What we got was utter and pure crap. It was barely put together, coded worse than I could have done myself (and I’m a very amateur PHP coder) and took forever.

On top of that, every week or so, they would send us an email about how “hard” the work was and how they needed more money to continue. Basically each week we got one day of work and then didnt get an update for another two weeks. Each time we asked what was going on and why there wasnt work being done on the project we were always told “oh we’re on holiday, we have lots of holidays in India, we’re off for the next three weeks, oh Ramesh is on vacation”.

Finally, after 4 months of the same bullshit, we told them to take a hike. About 10% of the project had been completed.

We moved on to an independent programmer who didnt work for a company. This programmer compared to Sanvera Solutions was miles better. At the time we were very pleased. However the same issues kept arising. “It is very hard work, I need more money”. “Sorry I have been busy/on vacation/away”. Finally this programmer said he wouldnt work unless we doubled the payment.

Since we negotiate a per project fee and have very thoroughly documented our requirements, we told him to take a hike.

Finally I come to our third programmer. I’m happy to say we’re quite pleased with him. But he’s not from India, he is Russian. He did everything from scratch in about 1-2 months writing far more advanced code than the previous two programmers and has been very flexible to work with.

As well as cheaper than the previous two. So I guess we learned a lesson. Dont hire anyone from India.

OMG, the Hinglish in Pradeep's messages is horrid, but typical of any slumdog working in corporate America today, even managers and executives. And stalking is a pretty common practice among the "best and the brightest". Hell, I used to get hundreds of comments a day from ghetto canines like Code Corrector and other online slumdog stalkers. Zuckerberg should accept this and embrace this cultural phenomenon. And stop being so "xenophobic and paranoid," as some HuffPo collaborator called it!

A fellow insurgent is circulating an outstanding letter that I urge all Americans to send to their congressmen:

The Honorable xxxxxx

United States Senate

112 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510-0505

Re: Americans should get the first crack at jobs this country creates.

To: Senator xxx:

I encourage you to take steps to reform and reduce the H-1B visa program, which has been widely abused.

The purpose of the H-1B program was to bring in a limited number of skilled, temporary workers for positions that could not be filled by domestic workers. Utilization of specialized talents to improve business and technology initiatives is a positive strategy. However, the issue is twofold:

1. Corporate America has been using H-1B workers as source of cheap labor to displace highly capable Americans.

2. When a H-1B holder gets into a managerial level, they tend to hire within their own culture exacerbating the importation of more H-1B workers.

It has seriously damaged the American information technology sector, discouraging future students from entering technological disciplines.

With unemployment over 9 percent for 20 consecutive months, it is unconscionable that businesses are importing foreign workers instead of hiring qualified American workers.

A new study from the GAO admits that no one knows the total number of H-1B workers in the U.S. at any one time. Industry advocates like to mention the 65,000 annual cap because that figure seems small, but they conceal the total number of American jobs displaced by this program.

Millions of Americans have lost jobs during this recession. I hope you will support efforts to track the total number of workers who arrive on these visas and stay in this country, as well as efforts to reduce the total number of these visas.

Disclaimer
The thoughts expressed on this blog may or may not be the author's own and are protected
by the 1st Amendment. Any attempt to reveal his identity by contacting a slumdog
hack at Google, or a corrupt Desi sys-admin at his ISP will be dealt with promptly
and severely. Civil and criminal penalties may apply if one is found to have used
private information in an attempt to get the author fired at the Hindu-only I.T.
ghetto he currently works at. In addition, any Desi who attempts to burn the author's
house down because they are enraged over his writing will be prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law. This isn't India.